Strawberry Farming in the United States (NAICS 111333)

An investor's primer. NAICS — the North American Industry Classification System — is the U.S. government's standard code for industries; 111333 covers farms whose main activity is growing strawberries. This primer is written for both public-market and private investors.

1. Overview

Strawberry farming is the business of growing fresh and processing strawberries, mostly on high-value irrigated land in California and Florida. It is a small slice of U.S. agriculture by acreage but an outsized one by dollars: the U.S. crop is worth roughly $4.4 billion a year at the farm gate on only about 62,000 harvested acres.[1] Economically it behaves less like a commodity grain crop and more like a perishable, labor-intensive, brand- and quality-sensitive fresh product — high revenue per acre, high cost per acre, and thin, volatile margins.

Value in this industry is created through reliable marketable yield, proprietary genetics, water and land access, harvest labor, cold-chain (cooling and refrigerated logistics) execution, retailer relationships, and brands. A single Central Coast California acre now costs roughly $113,000 a year to grow, harvest, and sell, and returns can swing from strong to negative on weather, labor, or a few bad price weeks.[7]

Public vs. private ways in. There is no pure-play publicly traded U.S. strawberry grower. The dominant operators — Driscoll's, California Giant, Well-Pict, Reiter Affiliated Companies, Naturipe, Wish Farms — are private. Public-market investors get only indirect exposure: through diversified fresh-produce companies (Dole plc; Del Monte Corporation, formerly Fresh Del Monte Produce) or through farmland real estate investment trusts (REITs — companies that own land and lease it to growers). Direct ownership of the crop's actual economics is a private-market, operator-heavy proposition.

2. What it is and how it's structured

Scope. NAICS 111333 is strawberry growing — field and protected-culture production of fresh-market and processing (frozen, juice, preserved) strawberries. Activity generally ends at the farm gate, before broader packing, processing, distribution, or retail. It sits inside NAICS 1113, "Fruit and Tree Nut Farming."[2]

What it excludes (adjacent codes):

• 111334 — Berry (except strawberry) farming: blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and similar. Grapes are separate again.[2]
• 111336 — Fruit and tree-nut combination farming: mixed operations where no single crop family is at least half of production.[2]
• 111419 — Other food crops grown under cover: some protected/greenhouse food-crop production is classified here rather than in field-crop codes.[2]
• 424480 — Fresh fruit and vegetable merchant wholesalers: the packing, cooling, and marketing a grower does not do on its own farm. The big "shippers" (Driscoll's and peers) are as much marketing and logistics companies as farms.[2]
• 311411 — Frozen fruit, juice, and vegetable manufacturing: freezing strawberries as a factory activity is food manufacturing, not farming.[2]
• 111421 — Nursery and tree production: nurseries that raise and sell strawberry transplants.[2]

The value chain has four layers: (1) farms and grower partnerships that bear crop, labor, water, and weather risk; (2) nurseries and breeders that supply planting stock and proprietary varieties; (3) shippers, packers, coolers, brands, and distributors that manage quality and market access; and (4) retailers, foodservice companies, and processors that control the customer and much of the pricing power.

Ownership mix is barbell-shaped. Almost 8,500 U.S. farms reported strawberries in the 2022 Census of Agriculture, but the roughly 160 farms with 100+ acres held about 64% of all strawberry acreage — a handful of large commercial operations dominate volume, alongside thousands of small, local, and pick-your-own growers who sell direct.[6] Most large growers run a licensed-genetics model: they grow proprietary varieties owned by a marketer (above all Driscoll's) or by a public breeding program, and sell under that marketer's brand. A meaningful share of "growers" are really land-and-labor operators executing another company's plant, brand, and sales program.

3. How big it is

Federal business statistics undercount this industry — by design. The U.S. Census Bureau's business programs (County Business Patterns, the Economic Census, Nonemployer Statistics, and the Statistics of U.S. Businesses) generally exclude crop and animal production (NAICS 111 and 112). So the usual establishment, employment, and payroll counts we rely on for most industries are largely unavailable here, and a missing count must not be read as zero.[5] The authoritative source is instead the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

From our ground-truth federal file, the one figure present is the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) size standard of $5.5 million in annual receipts — the ceiling below which a strawberry farm counts as "small" for federal programs. This is a program-eligibility threshold, not a measure of industry size.[3] Establishment counts, paid employment, and payroll for 111333 are not present in our federal business-statistics file, consistent with agriculture's exclusion from those programs.

What USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) does report (a hundredweight, or cwt, is 100 pounds):

Source: USDA NASS, Noncitrus Fruits and Nuts 2025 Summary (May 2026).[1]

A few things stand out. First, acreage growth is not a proxy for profit: from 2024 to 2025 planted acreage rose about 2%, but utilized production fell about 3% (weather and yield) while crop value rose about 10% (higher prices) — the variables move independently.[1] Second, strawberries are consistently among the top three U.S. noncitrus fruit crops by value, alongside grapes and apples, which together were about 77% of noncitrus fruit value in 2025.[1] Third, fresh dominates the money: in 2025, fresh-market fruit was 25.39 million cwt at $162/cwt ($4.10 billion), versus processing (frozen/juice) fruit of 5.81 million cwt at just $51.10/cwt ($297 million).[1]

Geography. California grows roughly 89% of the U.S. crop (27.64 million of 31.20 million cwt in 2025), led by the Central Coast (Watsonville/Salinas) and Oxnard/Santa Maria, with a near year-round season and 2025 yields around 615 cwt (61,500 lbs) per acre — far above any other state.[1] Florida is the clear #2 (about 11%; 3.56 million cwt on 17,000 acres) and owns the winter fresh market around Plant City; its lower per-acre yield (about 210 cwt) but much higher season price ($201/cwt in 2025) reflects a short, premium winter window.[1] Everywhere else — the Pacific Northwest, Upper Midwest, Northeast — production is small, seasonal, and mostly local/direct-market.

Consumer demand backdrop: per-capita fresh strawberry consumption reached about 6.7 lbs (2021), up roughly 45% from 4.6 lbs a decade earlier — one of the strongest structural growth stories in the produce aisle.[8]

4. The investable universe

There is no listed pure-play strawberry grower with separately disclosed strawberry financials. The table shows the realistic routes, public and private.

NYSE = New York Stock Exchange; Nasdaq = the Nasdaq stock market. A REIT (real estate investment trust) is a company that owns income-producing property and passes most of its income to shareholders as dividends.

Even more indirect proxies — grocery retailers (Walmart WMT, Costco COST, Kroger KR), foodservice distributors (Sysco SYY, US Foods USFD, Performance Food Group PFGC), and farm-input/equipment suppliers (Deere DE, Nutrien NTR, Corteva CTVA) — touch strawberry demand or grower spending, but none is a strawberry grower and strawberry exposure is a rounding error for each.

How to read this. The purest listed exposures are the farmland REITs — but they are diversified landlords, not strawberry bets; a single Oxnard or Florida parcel is immaterial to them. Dole and Del Monte give you a large, diversified produce company where strawberries are a minor line. To own the actual economics of strawberry growing you go private: buy or lease land, license genetics, and run a labor-heavy operation — or invest in the private grower-shippers where accessible.

5. How the money works

Strawberry economics are about revenue per acre versus a very high cost per acre, on a perishable product with volatile weekly prices. The underwriting equation is simple — revenue = marketable yield × realized price × acreage — but the profit that survives depends on labor, plants, water, land, pesticides, packaging, cooling, freight, financing, insurance, and compliance.

Scale of the numbers. At the 2025 national average, crop value was roughly $71,000 per harvested acre ($82,000 per acre in California) — a gross crop-value figure, before any costs.[1] Against that, the University of California's 2024 Central Coast cost study puts the cost to grow, harvest, and sell at about $113,000 per acre per year, up roughly 18% from its 2021 study.[7] Those two numbers measure different things (a statewide gross-value average versus full costs on premium coastal ground), but together they explain why the UC authors call profitability "elusive": on high-cost coastal land, a soft-price season can wipe out the margin entirely.[7]

Labor is the dominant cost. Strawberries are hand-picked repeatedly over a long season. The UC study loads field-labor at about $24.42/hour and machine operators at $29.60/hour (wages plus payroll taxes, workers' comp, and overhead); University of Florida budgets put labor near 40% of total production cost, and harvest labor alone can run 40–50%+.[7][12] This is the single biggest swing factor (see Regulation).

What determines whether a grower makes money:

1. Price realization. Fresh strawberries sell week-to-week into an oversupply-prone market; a few weeks of low prices during peak volume can erase a season. Growers historically capture only about half the retail price of fresh strawberries.[8]
2. Yield and pack-out. More marketable pounds per acre spread the fixed cost over more revenue; disease, weather, and variety choice drive this.
3. Season timing. Being first (Florida winter) or filling shoulder-season gaps commands far higher prices than shipping into California's spring peak — the reason Florida's per-cwt price runs well above California's.[1]
4. Labor availability and cost.
5. Mix. Fresh commands roughly three times the processing price, and organic carries a persistent premium over conventional.[8]

The branded-genetics economics. Marketers like Driscoll's monetize proprietary varieties: growers pay to use the plants and sell under the brand, and the marketer captures value across breeding, branding, sales, and category management — a more defensible, higher-return position than dirt-and-labor growing. This is why the profit pool concentrates at the marketer/genetics layer, not the field.

For the farmland-REIT route, the economics are rent, not berries: triple-net leases (tenant pays taxes, insurance, upkeep) generating lease income plus land appreciation on scarce, high-value irrigated ground.

6. What drives demand

• Health and convenience. Berries read as an everyday healthy snack; per-capita fresh strawberry use rose about 45% in a decade, supporting both volume and premium pricing.[8]
• Year-round availability. Coordinated California, Florida, Mexican, and greenhouse supply has turned strawberries from a seasonal treat into a 52-week staple, expanding the addressable market.
• Retail and club-store distribution. Big-box and club channels reward reliable, year-round, branded, consistent-quality supply — favoring the large integrated shippers.
• Product innovation. Better-tasting, longer-shelf-life varieties, organic and premium formats, and ready-to-eat/convenience packs lift both demand and price.
• Value-added and processing. Frozen, fresh-cut, and ingredient demand (yogurt, bakery, smoothies) is a secondary outlet, though at much lower prices.
• Imports fill the calendar. In 2025, U.S. fresh strawberry imports hit a record ~590 million pounds worth about $1.04 billion, roughly 98% from Mexico and about 80% arriving December–April; U.S. fresh exports were ~309 million pounds, nearly 90% to Canada or Mexico.[4] This integration widens year-round supply but also intensifies price competition (see Risks).

7. Regulation

Regulation is central because it hits the two biggest cost and yield levers — labor and soil fumigation.

• Labor. California — nearly 90% of the crop — leads the country in tightening farm-labor rules. Assembly Bill (AB) 1066 phased in daily/weekly overtime for farmworkers from 2019–2025; as of January 1, 2025 overtime begins at 8 hours/day or 40 hours/week for all California farm employers.[9] Growers using the federal H-2A temporary agricultural worker visa must first show a shortage of U.S. workers and pay the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR) — a special minimum for H-2A and comparable domestic workers — about $19.97/hour in California for 2025, above the $16.50 state minimum, plus mandated housing, meals, and transport.[9] The U.S. Department of Labor administers H-2A recruitment, wage, housing, and worker-protection rules.[9] Immigration policy and workforce availability are existential inputs.
• Soil fumigants. High-yield conventional production has historically depended on fumigating soil before planting to kill pathogens. The workhorse fumigant methyl bromide was phased out under the Montreal Protocol and Clean Air Act as an ozone-depleting substance, with critical-use exemptions winding down after the mid-2010s.[10] Replacements — chloropicrin and 1,3-dichloropropene (1,3-D) — face their own California and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) restrictions (buffer zones, application caps, township limits) as toxic air contaminants. The EPA registers pesticides under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and sets residue tolerances under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA); state rules can be stricter.[10] Fumigant availability directly constrains yields and disease control.
• Food safety. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Produce Safety Rule sets federal standards for water, worker hygiene, soil amendments, equipment, and contamination controls on fresh-produce farms; the 2024 agricultural-water rule adds systems-based pre-harvest water assessments. Compliance cost falls hardest on smaller operations.[11]
• Grades and organic labeling. USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) publishes the strawberry grade standards used in trade and runs the National Organic Program (NOP), which controls the "USDA Organic" label through certification and inspection.[23]
• Water. California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and periodic drought allocations affect irrigation cost and availability on the coastal ground where strawberries grow.

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

The market is concentrated at the marketing/genetics layer and fragmented at the dirt layer.

• Driscoll's is the anchor. It is the world's largest berry company and the dominant force in U.S. strawberries — a large majority of U.S. strawberries are grown under its licensed varieties and brand, and industry press has put its share at roughly a third of the (then ~$6 billion) U.S. berry market as of 2017.[21] Its moat is proprietary breeding plus brand plus a coordinated network of independent growers.
• A handful of other large shippers — California Giant (~$500M est.), Naturipe, Well-Pict, and Wish Farms (~$200M est.) — round out the branded field, several structured as grower-owned cooperatives or joint ventures.[18][20]
• Public breeding programs matter. The University of California, Davis strawberry program (running since the 1930s, dozens of patented cultivars, including recent Fusarium-wilt-resistant releases) and the University of Florida program supply widely grown non-proprietary varieties and drive disease-resistance genetics — a partial counterweight to private genetics.[22]
• Consolidation logic. Scale advantages in genetics, cold chain, retailer relationships, and compliance push volume toward the largest players, while land and labor constraints keep the actual growing dispersed across many operators and geographies (California, Florida, Mexico, and beyond). Big retailers increasingly prefer fewer suppliers who can serve national, year-round needs — favoring scale and compliance systems. Consolidation is therefore more likely in breeding, nursery supply, packing, cold storage, branding, and distribution than in owning every field. Vertical coordination — from breeding to field-packing to shelf — is the winning structure, and it concentrates buyer power in a few shippers.

9. Risks

• Labor. Rising wages, farm-overtime rules, H-2A cost and complexity, and immigration-driven workforce scarcity are the top structural risk; mechanized harvest remains largely unproven at commercial scale.
• Margin squeeze. ~$113,000/acre coastal costs against volatile weekly prices make profitability "elusive" (UC cost study); a soft-price season can lose money.[7]
• Perishability. A short selling window creates exposure to spoilage, quality claims, markdowns, and freight disruption.
• Disease and pests. Soil-borne pathogens — Fusarium wilt, Macrophomina (charcoal rot), Verticillium, Phytophthora, and newer threats like Neopestalotiopsis — plus Botrytis, anthracnose, mites, and nematodes can collapse fields, and the fumigants that controlled them are being restricted, raising the stakes on resistant genetics.[20][22]
• Weather and climate. Heat, untimely rain, storms, and freezes hit a perishable crop hard; recent USDA reporting cited California rain delays and Florida freeze-related volume cuts. A bad weather week at peak harvest destroys both yield and price.[1][4]
• Import competition. Mexico supplies ~98% of U.S. fresh strawberry imports (~590 million lbs, ~$1.04 billion in 2025) and competes directly in the winter/spring window; trade disputes (U.S. growers have sought antidumping relief on Mexican winter strawberries) or currency swings shift the balance.[4]
• Input, water, and land cost/availability. Fumigants, fertilizer, plastic mulch, fuel, packaging, refrigeration, interest expense, water rights, and competing development uses all add cost and regulatory risk.
• Retailer and counterparty concentration. Large buyers can demand lower prices, stricter specs, and promotional support. For growers, dependence on a single marketer's genetics and sales program is a strategic vulnerability; for the marketer's model, grower economics have to stay viable.
• Disclosure risk. Public-company statements do not isolate strawberry results, so listed exposure is hard to value precisely.

10. How to invest and the outlook

Public routes (all indirect):

• Farmland REITs — Gladstone Land (LAND) and Farmland Partners (FPI) — are the closest listed proxy: you own scarce irrigated cropland leased to growers and collect rent. This is a land/rent bet, not a strawberry-price bet, and berry parcels are a small slice of diversified portfolios.[19]
• Diversified produce — Dole plc (DOLE) and Del Monte Corporation (DMC, formerly FDP) — give exposure to global fresh-produce logistics and branding, where strawberries are one minor line. Key diligence questions: does management disclose berry volumes, pricing, sourcing mix (Del Monte reported 52% company-controlled vs 48% independent-supplier production across its portfolio in 2025), gross margin, labor and water exposure, customer concentration, and working capital?[13][14]
• There is no ETF or listed company that isolates strawberry-farming economics.

Private routes (direct exposure):

• Owning or leasing acreage and running an operation — genuine but operationally intensive, labor-dependent, and best done with licensed genetics and a marketing agreement (e.g., growing for Driscoll's or a cooperative). Underwrite with downside cases for lower yield/pack-out, lower fresh prices, a higher processing mix, labor and water inflation, weather/disease loss, delayed retailer payments, higher rates, and loss of a key buyer, variety license, or grower relationship.
• Investing in or partnering with the private grower-shippers, where accessible.
• Land itself — high-value coastal California and Florida ground — as an appreciating, income-producing real asset.

Near-term drivers (forward-looking):

• Labor cost and availability is the swing factor; expect continued upward pressure and a slow, uncertain push toward harvest automation.
• Genetics and disease resistance are where competitive advantage is being won as fumigants are restricted — watch UC Davis, University of Florida, and private breeding pipelines.[22]
• Consumer demand for fresh berries remains a tailwind, and USDA's outlook points to continued year-round demand and expanding Florida acreage — but rising supply from both California and Mexico keeps price risk live; recent USDA data already show acreage up, output down, and value up in the same year.[1][4]

Overall judgment. Strawberry farming is a structurally growing, high-revenue, high-cost, thin-margin business where returns accrue disproportionately to whoever owns the plant, the brand, and the shelf. It is better understood as a specialized real-asset and supply-chain opportunity than as a "stock-market sector." Public investors can rent the trend through farmland or diversified produce names; capturing the crop's actual economics remains a private, operator's game.

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Sources

1. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, Noncitrus Fruits and Nuts 2025 Summary (May 2026) — U.S./California/Florida strawberry area, yield, production, price, and value, 2023–2025; fresh vs. processing utilization. https://esmis.nal.usda.gov/sites/default/release-files/795891/ncit0526.pdf
2. U.S. Census Bureau, "2022 NAICS Definitions" — 111333 and adjacent codes (111334, 111336, 111419, 111421, 311411, 424480). https://www.census.gov/naics/?input=111333&year=2022
3. U.S. Small Business Administration, "Table of Small Business Size Standards" (NAICS 111333 = $5.5 million in receipts), 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
4. USDA Economic Research Service, Fruit and Tree Nuts Outlook (FTS report, March 2026) — 2025 imports/exports, trade shares, and market outlook. https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pubdetails/?pubid=110900
5. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns and Nonemployer Statistics coverage notes (crop production, NAICS 111, excluded from business programs). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/about.html
6. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2022 Census of Agriculture (U.S. farms reporting strawberries; acreage concentration among 100+ acre farms). https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2022/
7. University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources / UC Davis, "Sample Costs to Produce and Harvest Strawberries — Central Coast," March 2024 (≈$113,000/acre; field-labor $24.42/hr, machine $29.60/hr). https://coststudyfiles.ucdavis.edu/2024/04/04/2024Strawberry-FULL-FINAL-March2024.pdf
8. USDA Economic Research Service — per-capita fresh strawberry consumption (~6.7 lbs, 2021); "farmers received about half of what consumers paid for fresh strawberries"; organic-premium data. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/
9. Croptracker, "Five Important Labor Law Changes for California's Farm Workers," and UC Davis Rural Migration News (AB 1066 overtime phase-in; 2025 California H-2A AEWR $19.97 vs. $16.50 state minimum); U.S. Department of Labor, "H-2A Temporary Agricultural Program." https://www.croptracker.com/blog/five-important-labor-law-changes-for-california%E2%80%99s-farm-workers.html; https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/programs/h-2a
10. Chemical & Engineering News, "Strawberries in Peril Because of Fumigant Phaseout," 2015; USDA ERS, "Methyl Bromide Phaseout Proceeds"; California Department of Pesticide Regulation, chloropicrin/1,3-D risk documents; U.S. EPA pesticide registration (FIFRA/FFDCA). https://cen.acs.org/articles/93/i23/Strawberries-Peril-Fumigant-Phaseout.html; https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-registration
11. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, FSMA Produce Safety Rule and 2024 Agricultural Water Final Rule. https://www.fda.gov/food/food-safety-modernization-act-fsma/fsma-final-rule-produce-safety
12. University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, strawberry labor-cost research (labor ≈ 40% of Florida production cost). https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/FE1143
13. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Del Monte Corporation (formerly Fresh Del Monte Produce) Form 10-K; company release, "Fresh Del Monte Produce Announces Name Change to Del Monte Corporation and NYSE Ticker Change to 'DMC'" (FDP→DMC effective June 29, 2026; 52% company-controlled / 48% independent production). https://freshdelmonte.com/news/fresh-del-monte-produce-inc-announces-name-change-to-del-monte-corporation-and-nyse-ticker-symbol-change-to-dmc/
14. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Dole plc Form 10-K. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=DOLE&type=10-K
15. Driscoll's, "About" / company profile (world's largest berry company; proprietary genetics; independent-grower network). https://www.driscolls.com/about
16. Reiter Affiliated Companies, "Company." https://www.berry.net/company/
17. Naturipe Farms, "About / How We Grow" (grower-owned partnership). https://www.naturipefarms.com/
18. Wish Farms, "Meet the Family / Berries"; California Giant Berry Farms, "About Us." https://wishfarms.com/; https://www.calgiant.com/about-us/
19. Gladstone Land Corporation (LAND) SEC filings and press releases (Oxnard/coastal strawberry and berry farmland; triple-net leases); Farmland Partners (FPI). https://www.gladstonefarms.com/investors/; https://www.farmlandpartners.com/
20. Procurement Resource, "Strawberries Producers in the USA" (California Giant ~$500M and Wish Farms ~$200M revenue estimates — trade estimate, not audited). https://www.procurementresource.com/blog/strawberries-producers-in-the-usa
21. Industry press via Wikipedia, "Driscoll's" (roughly one-third of the ~$6 billion U.S. berry market as of 2017; citing trade coverage). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driscoll%27s
22. UC Davis Strawberry Breeding Program (disease-resistance research; Fusarium-wilt-resistant releases); University of Florida strawberry breeding. https://strawberry.ucdavis.edu/
23. USDA Agricultural Marketing Service — U.S. strawberry grade standards and National Organic Program (USDA Organic certification). https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/strawberry-grades-and-standards; https://www.ams.usda.gov/services/organic-certification